Apartment plans ready for Hilton Head Christian site. But the school isn’t ready to move
Developers are moving ahead with plans to turn the land where Hilton Head Christian Academy now sits into 260 apartments after the school moves across the bridge to Bluffton.
But the school isn’t moving as early as planned.
On Thursday, the school’s director of advancement, Dorothy Guscio, said the school will move to its new location at Masters Way and Bluffton Parkway in January 2021. “We will remain on this campus on Hilton Head for the first semester,” she said.
Initially, the plan was for classes to start in Bluffton in fall 2020, according to the school’s official applications to the Town of Bluffton. Spandrel Development Partners, the team planning to raze the old school building on the island, also have used the fall 2020 timetable.
Asked why the date appears to have changed, Guscio said she didn’t know if the school “ever said definitively” that it would be starting classes in Bluffton in August 2020. The school’s most recent application to the town said schedules are subject to change due to market conditions.
Infrastructure such as fire hydrants have been installed on the site, but there’s no clear sign of construction going up on any part of the 80,000-square-foot campus.
“Our target date is January 2021, and we’re really confident in our partnership with Chaote Construction,” Guscio said of the builders of the new campus. “Our families are really excited about it and the leadership is finalizing a really detailed plan (for relocation).”
A call to Chaote Construction project manager Alex Brown was not returned Friday.
Meanwhile, the landscape architecture firm responsible for the Hilton Head apartment plan applied to the town’s design review board Tuesday for approval of lighting and colors for the buildings — which gives islanders a sense of what the development will look like.
In July, Hilton Head Island Town Council approved the plan for three 55-foot-tall apartment buildings and one 45-foot-tall building on the 13.8-acre site.
Contacted last week, New York-based firm Spandrel Development Partners, declined to comment on its timeline for construction.
While the school’s moving date has always loomed, Spandrel has hit several roadblocks and never officially announced a start date for the project.
Neighbors of the old Christian Academy worried about building height and disruption of their relatively quiet neighborhood. Spandrel developers revised plans for the complex several times to appease them.
Part of the agreement between the town and Spandrel is a minimum rental period of six months and that 5% of the development— or 13 units — be priced below market rate for the island’s workforce for a minimum of 20 years.
The buildings will be reevaluated each year to confirm it still has workforce-oriented units and isn’t being used as a short-term rental community.
Spandrel developer Emanuel Neuman said in July that a below-market unit may be priced around $850 per month for a studio, and $1,100 for a two-bedroom apartment. The rest of the units, he said, will rent at the original rates of $1,200 to $2,800 per month.
The density of the property will be 19 units per acre, according to the plans. That’s relatively high in relation to the four surrounding communities, where the average density is 10 to 11 units per acre.
Hilton Head Christian Academy parents and representatives have long supported the higher density, which allows the school to sell its land at a higher price.
